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Celebrate Leslie Nielsen’s Incredible Talent With the Naked Gun Baseball Scene (Video)

Legendary comic actor Leslie Nielsen died earlier today. He was 84. Though he lived to an advanced age, his death still comes as horrendously depressing news to comedy junkies. Nielsen gave arguably the most memorable performance of one of the greatest spoof movies of all time (Airplane!) and carried another on his back (The Naked Gun: From The Files Of Police Squad!). Additionally, the television series on which The Naked Gun and its two sequels were based, Police Squad!, was a cult favorite.

It just so happens, as CNBC’s Darren Rovell pointed out earlier, that one of the most memorable sequences of the impossibly brilliant Naked Gun (seriously, if you haven’t seen it, I can’t recommend it highly enough) involved Nielsen’s character, Lt. Frank Drebin, trying to infiltrate a baseball game to stop an assassination plot against Queen Elizabeth II. He first did this by posing as renowned opera singer Enrico Pallazzo (for the national anthem), then as an umpire.

Video of these two segments above. Watch, enjoy, and wonder why a game that seems to be between the Angels and Mariners is being played at what is clearly Dodger Stadium. And most of all, marvel that Nielsen didn’t even begin his career as a comic actor. RIP to a brilliant, brilliant performer.